Grassley asks about 'political infection' on Hunter Biden case

 Washington Examiner:

A top Republican senator is pressing FBI Director Christopher Wray on the “deeply rooted political infection” within the bureau, demanding answers about allegations that the FBI wrongly labeled evidence about Hunter Biden as “disinformation” in 2020.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) told Wray in a letter that since the end of May, he has written him three letters “regarding political bias that has infected the FBI’s Washington Field Office.” He said two of the letters “provided specific and credible allegations based on numerous whistleblowers that have approached my office with information that one can only conclude is indicative of a deeply rooted political infection that has spread to investigative activity into former President Trump and Hunter Biden.”

Whistleblower allegations emerged last month that FBI supervisory intelligence agent Brian Auten opened an assessment in Aug. 2020 which was used by FBI headquarters to wrongly label accurate information about President Joe Biden’s son as false, according to disclosures made public by Grassley.

“The FBI has not refuted these serious allegations," Grassley told Wray. "Thus far, the FBI has failed to address the concerns that I’ve raised and failed to produce the requested records.”

Because of the FBI’s “failure to respond to my legitimate oversight requests,” the senator said he wanted Wray to provide him with a “comprehensive organization chart” for the Washington Field Office so that the senator could better understand staffing and leadership at the field office. He asked the FBI director to hand the chart over by the end of the month.

The federal criminal investigation into Hunter Biden is being handled by Trump-appointed Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss.

Grassley pointed to Wray’s early August testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in which the senator had asked him if it is standard practice for the FBI to share potential criminal information with the relevant U.S. attorney’s office.

“My expectation is that when a particular office has the lead, both the U.S. attorney’s office and the relevant FBI field office, that if other offices come across that information — information that’s relevant to that — we want to make sure those tips and leads are passed to the responsible office,” Wray replied.

Grassley called this “just one example of how this political bias impacts investigations” in his new letter.

“How can verified and verifiable information relating to Hunter Biden’s potential criminality be shared with U.S. Attorney Weiss if it is shut down?” Grassley asked Wray. “How can the Hunter Biden criminal investigation be full and complete if the FBI improperly shut down verified and verifiable information and sourcing relating to potential criminal activity? How can Congress and the American people trust the results?”

...

There appears to be evidence that some in the FBI falsely stated that Hunter's laptop was "misinformation."  Have those who took such a position been called to account for obviously being wrong?  Was their action a deliberate attempt to stop the investigation of the alleged corruption?  If so, shouldn't they be terminated or at least taken off the case? 

It looks like troubling could have more than one meaning at the FBI.  Is it "troubling" because of apparent attempts to shut down a valid investigation or "troubling" because the attempt to do so was discovered and became public?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more